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Brilliant flash spotted in sky above the Prairies
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Date: Wed. Feb. 22 2012 10:18 PM ET
A cosmic fireball has streaked across the Prairie sky, delighting eyewitnesses in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Alan Hildebrand of the Canadian Fireball Reporting Centre confirmed that the bright flash of light spotted as far west as Lloydminster, Alta. on Tuesday was a meteor hurtling through the sky.
He estimates it weighed about 100 kilograms and landed near North Battleford, Sask.
The space rock revealed itself to onlookers as a dazzling flash of light that disappeared as quickly as it arrived.
Observers marvelled online at the size of the fireball, taking to social media networks to ask others if they caught a glimpse of it.
A Twitter user who identifies herself as Tenille Lafontaine said she was sitting in her Saskatchewan home at about 9:30 p.m. when she saw a flash outside her patio door.
"I brushed it off completely thinking that I probably caught a reflection from the kitchen lighting," she wrote in a blog post. "At the same time, I also felt a loud rumble that made my living room wall shake."
Lafontaine wrote that she started to think twice about the flash and rumble when she logged onto Twitter and noticed other users had seen a streak of light.
Shane Taylor, another eyewitness, spotted the meteor from his home in Wildwood, Alta., about 122 kilometres west of Edmonton.
"You just don't see something like that," he told CTV Edmonton Morning Live. "You see falling stars and stuff, but this is a good sized ball."
Other witnesses in Saskatchewan reported hearing a booming noise accompany the flash of light.
Meteors are capable of putting on a magnificent light show but are, in essence, cosmic debris, said Hildebrand.
"They slow down high up in the atmosphere and then it's just rocks falling through the sky," he told CTV Edmonton.
One witness in south Calgary had a camera pointed at the sky as the meteor streaked northeast of the city. The observer uploaded the footage to YouTube, allowing others to see the brief but brilliant flash of light.
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